"Close, but no cigar."

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:17 AM -0400 4/7/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>HDAS has this, of course, under "cigar," which allows you to look it up even
>if all you hear is "No cigar!"  The earliest ex. is from 1935.
>
>It was explained to me in the early '70s that the ref. is to the old-time
>carnival feat of strength involving bashing a spring-loaded platform with a
>mallet to try to ring a column-mounted bell whose sound would tell the world
>that you had super strength.

I do remember that--the bell, not the cigar, that is.

>  As if that weren't enough, you'd get a cigar
>too.

And presumably it beat out "Close but no bell" because the latter
might lead someone to infer that a Nobel prize had been awarded for
the effort.

LH

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